We have to dig pretty deep to find anything in theaters these days that’s remotely sexy and sophisticated.* The Names of Love is no masterpiece. It only looks like one compared to Larry Crowne. Winner of 3 César Awards including Best Screenplay and Best Actress, it’s playing in 5 theaters across the US this weekend. And by ‘across’ I mean ‘on the furthest edges.’
*(no, even though Marion Cotillard is undeniably sexy and sophisticated, I don’t count the French-flavored dry-hump film she’s in this summer. That’s my bitter lonely minority opinion, and I realize better authorities disagree.)
And then there’s Leap Year, the story of an “insatiable nymphet” who hooks up with “random men for sexual encounters that leave her feeling varying degrees of unsatisfied.”
All that changes when her latest partner, the quiet, inscrutable Gustavo Sánchez Parra, ups the ante considerably: An affair that begins with a little S&M grows more perverse and dangerous with each session, and it’s not clear who, if anyone, is in control.
Never to be confused for the rom-com starring Amy Adams—though that would be the mother of all video-store mix-ups—Leap Year lets actions speak louder than words, and the actions here are shockingly explicit. When del Carmen does get a monologue, it’s an astonishing piece of writing and acting, revealing a fantasy choked in sadness, desire, and a dwindling sense of self-worth. Rowe makes her psychology a little easier to unpack than it might be, but Leap Year doesn’t go where it appears to be heading, and del Carmen’s wrenching performance is somehow both raw and completely mysterious. (Scott Tobias, Onion AV Club)
Leap Year is showing in a grand total of 1 theater and that theater is a thousand miles from Kansas. Trailer after the cut.